Arabella announced that Patrick Norton would be giving a presentation on the college finances on July 24th and 25th. She will send around and email announcement with times.

2. Report/Recommendation from the Internal Communications Task force

Terry presented the task force recommendations to staff. It was suggested that an LIS staff only, private, blog be created to post agendas and notes for various LIS meetings. Possible meetings to be posted here would be:

Area Directors

Manager’s

All Staff

Liaison

FLAC-Faculty LIS Advisory Committee

SLAC-Student LIS Advisory Committee

Teams

Web Prioritization

Banner Leads

Divisional Faculty Advisory Committees

The task force also recommends that someone be assigned to post agendas and take notes for each meeting, and a moderator be assigned to ensure these are posted to the blog according to their recommendations.

The task force would like to revisit this every 6 months.

The current blog will be used for announcements and content of interest to the general public.

Staff comments:

This blog could be a good place to post conference reports

Agenda topics should be posted in such a way that asks for feedback

How do we encourage open two-way discussion?

Mike asked for a vote to accept the task force recommendations. The staff unanimously voted to accept these recommendations.

3. Discuss time for professional development proposal

Mike presented a proposal to create a pilot project to build in time for learning

In order to keep up with the myriad changes in technology and library services that impact how we do our work, we propose that as an organization we collectively block out some substantial chunk of time on a regular basis to provide us time to learn new things.

Questions about this idea:

Do you think this is a good idea? Why or why not?

How often do you think we should block out time for this sort of professional development? Once a week? Once every other week? Once every three weeks? Once a month? Some other increment of time?

How much time should we block out? 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours? 4 hours?

Should our entire organization commit to the same block of time, or should each individual pick his/her own? Alternatively, should workgroups schedule together, or areas?

What strategies might we use to not disrupt our ability to deliver timely services to our users?

Would you prefer to pursue this professional development on your own, or as part of a small group of people learning something together?

If you had a block of time on a regular basis that you could dedicate to your own professional development, what would you do with that time? Please be specific about what you might pursue.

What resources would you require in order to pursue this? Books? Webinars? New software?

Other comments/questions concerns?

Mike will send around a survey to collect opinions to move this project forward. Results to be discussed at the next manager’s meeting.

We will choose those goals that we want to include in the overall College plan (and stakeholders that need to be informed/consulted)

We need to create linkage to overall college goals/direction (two-way: how does what we propose support the overall direction, and given what we know of the direction, what should we be doing?)

We will hear from stakeholders who require help from us in our goal setting process

Next year’s goals

How can we build in considerations of next year’s (fy14-15) goals into the upcoming budget process this Fall?

]]>LIS R&R Crew Awards for April and Mayhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MiddLibraryInformationServices/~3/6Jx09BYSaKE/
Tue, 28 May 2013 20:37:38 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=31906Continue reading →]]>The LIS Recognition & Recreation Crew is pleased to announce the April and May winners of the Employees and Crew of the Month Awards.

]]>LIS R&R Crew Recognition Awards from September – Januaryhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MiddLibraryInformationServices/~3/bkkqD4-_wUU/
Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:43:15 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=31157Continue reading →]]>The LIS Recognition & Recreation Crew is pleased to announce the recipients of the Employees and Crew of the Months of September, October, November and January 2013, Awards were not given in December.

Mike announced that all the open replacement positions have been approved by the SRC.

Carol announced that Joe Antonioli will be assuming a newly created position as the Senior Curricular Innovation Specialist. In addition to serving as the head of LIS’ curricular technology program, Joe will work closely with Shel Sax, Director of Educational Technology, and will co-lead the liaison program with Carrie Macfarlane

Carrie Macfarlane introduced Kristina Simmons who will be working on a part-time basis for Research and Instruction.

Mike then introduced Tim Spears and James Davis who came to discuss the “cost and relevance” of what it means to be a liberal arts college in the 21st century. Tim and James have been talking to faculty and will extend discussion to staff and students in the spring.

Aline Germain-Rutherford joined the group and gave a detailed presentation on Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL), which provides online languages courses to pre-college students. Click here for more information on MIL: http://www.middlebury.edu/mil

The meeting began with some general discussion on the following topics.

Attendance expectations for All LIS Staff meetings – the last meeting yielded low numbers in attendance. ADs will remind staff that their attendance is expected at these meetings.

Website has been updated to include the AD Team charge.

Summer schedule – vacation and holiday schedules were discussed. Mike will contact Michael Geisler to discuss closing the library at 5 pm on July 4th.

Optional All LIS Staff Meetings – we talked about the timing of these meetings and it was decided to hold optional informational meetings to once a month and to not hold them during the summer.

The first year for the R&R crew comes to a close on June 30th with new membership starting in July. Membership will be recruited from past Employee of the Month Award Winners. It was also decided to only give awards out only during the academic year. You will hear more from the R&R Crew about an upcoming all-staff potluck in August.

Mike distributed the charge for the “Communications” group to the ADs for discussion. The charge was approved with slight modifications. The deadline to identify and define milestones will be June 30th. Mike will distribute to group members.

Proposal for Penalty Point System proposal has been approved by the ADs for students and staff. A blog post will be prepared and submitted.

Chris led the ADs through a review and discussion about the Network Monitoring & Incident Response Policy, which will be added to the handbook, after receiving approval from President’s Staff.

The ADs discussed the timing of conducting the Google/MS Live evaluation. In order to take into consideration staff workloads, Mike asked the ADs to estimate project timelines/completion dates for major current projects to see when it would be feasible to complete this evaluation.

In anticipation of an upcoming discussion with the Web Team, Terry asked the ADs for input on elements of a new charge for Web Team mark III. The ADs suggested a number of topics, which Terry will bring to the team for discussion. On a related note, Chris presented a draft of a team charge for the Security Team to the ADs for approval. Rather than a list of specific tasks, this charge serves as a sort of “statement of purpose,” which the Team can use on a continuing basis to set goals each year. This approach might also benefit other teams as well. After some discussion, the ADs approved the charge and are happy to meet with Team members for follow-up, if desired.

Mary Backus presented a proposal for printer consolidation to review and discuss prior to presenting it to President’s Staff. ADs were interested in learning more about the money saved and time gained from supporting fewer printers, as well as the criteria for deciding which printers to remove (e.g., distance or easy access to printers, no. of pages printed, etc.) Mary will provide more information on this.

Chris Norris gave a system level monitoring & availability update, sharing the data compiled in the last 3 months on how College systems are performing. Over this period of time, systems were performing at 99.81% and not the preferred 99.9%, due to downtimes on systems for a variety of reasons (migration, Middfiles affects, scheduled upgrades, and other planned outages). Some systems of concern are iGreentree, Frontrush, Segue and the MIIS Drupal site. Systems working at 100% were Google, Rave, Cybersource and Blackberry.

Mary presented to the ADs, a recommendation from Education and Training Team to modify language regarding technology skills for every job description in LIS. The recommended language to be included is as follows:

“Demonstrate proficiency in general computing skills, such as e-mail, word processing, and use of web-based applications and resources.

Ability to operate in a networked computer environment, including the appropriate use of file storage, understanding security best practices, and a willingness and ability to develop new competencies”.

The ADs have approved this language change. This topic will be brought to the managers for discussion.

The AD Retreat has been cancelled for this month.

Upcoming agenda items:

Digital scholarship-presentation.conversation with Rebekah Irwin

Update on MIIS infrastructure project

Web Team discussion on needs analysis and usability testing activities and a communication/awareness plan to share results and presentation materials to LIS

Management Training – the next steps. The ADs talked about how to proceed now that the management training sessions are completed. How do we apply what was learned to LIS? This topic will be brought to the Workgroup Leaders at the next Manager’s meeting for discussion.

In January Mike prepared and published the first LIS Quarterly Report which included highlights of projects over a three month period. This week Mike distributed his second installment report covering January-March to the ADs for their review. The report contents were discussed and edits were made to this very comprehensive document.

Reminder to Managers to prepare the Annual Report write-up for their workgroups. The write-up should be one-page in length and submitted to Doreen Bernier by June 30th. The deadline for statistics is July 10th.

LIS Blog – How do we communicate newsworthy topics to the community? This topic will also be brought to the managers to discuss.

The Space Team joined the ADs to discuss plans for the possible use of 118 South Main Street for LIS staff offices. The Space Team will need to take in consideration office space for new hires for both phase 1 and 2 of the LIS staffing plan, and also plan for the return of the upper level offices for the faculty use. A tour of the facility will be arranged for the Space Team to see if it could fill our space needs. As mentioned in last week’s AD notes, the lower level of the building is currently available and could house 8-9 staff members. (To be clear, the decision about whether or not we can use the space is a decision that the campus space committee will make.)

Who handles assessments? Since Carol has taken on the directorship of Enterprise Applications, who will handle assessments? Terry will take on all surveys, except for Educause, which Carol will continue to handle.

Annual Reports and Goal Setting for next year.
· Annual Report: All written materials need to be submitted by June 30th, with statistics being submitted by July 10th.
· Goals: all goals should also be in place by June 30th. The ADs need to work up “smart” goals for their areas for the coming year.
· Strategic Directions and Vision: Time needs to be spent on polishing these documents and making sure they are aligned with the College goals.

Future agenda items:
1. How to communicate to all of LIS what we learned at management training